The tunnel spat them out into a new kind of hell.

This one was beautiful.

They stood on the threshold of the second level of the labyrinth, a cavern so vast it felt like a world unto itself.

The air was still, silent, and tasted of cold, clean ozone.

Everything was crystal.

The tunnel spat them out into a new kind of hell.

This one was beautiful.

They stood on the threshold of the second level of the labyrinth, a cavern so vast it felt like a world unto itself.

The air was still, silent, and tasted of cold, clean ozone.

Everything was crystal.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling—all of it was a single, unbroken mass of a strange, translucent mineral that pulsed with a soft, internal, and deeply unsettling light.

The light refracted through a thousand different facets, painting the air with a dazzling, disorienting kaleidoscope of rainbows.

"Whoa," Jax breathed, his voice a hushed, reverent whisper that was swallowed by the cavern's immense silence.

He leaned on his high-tech crutch, his eyes wide with a manic, architectural glee.

"This place is sparkly."

He took a hesitant step forward.

The sound of his boot on the crystal floor wasn't a crunch.

It was a chime.

A single, pure, and impossibly clear note that echoed through the vast, silent space, a beautiful, lonely sound.

"It's like we're walking inside a giant, very pointy chandelier," he added, his grin returning.

Jinx was not impressed.

She moved with a coiled, predatory stillness, her rifle held low, her eyes scanning the crystalline walls with a deep, professional suspicion.

"This is a kill box," she growled, her voice a low, cynical rasp that was absorbed by the strange acoustics of the room.

"A beautiful, sparkly kill box."

She squinted, her gaze sweeping the area.

"The light," she said, her voice tight with frustration. "It's bouncing everywhere. It's going to play hell with our optics."

"And our senses," Michael added, his own mind a chaotic jumble of reflected, refracted, and utterly useless data.

His [Void Sense] was a mess.

The crystal walls were acting like a hall of mirrors for psychic energy.

He could feel a thousand phantom threats, a thousand false echoes, all screaming for his attention.

It was like trying to find a single, specific voice in a stadium full of screaming fans.

He was blind.

"Luna."

Chloe's voice was a calm, steady presence in their ears, a thin thread of logic in the disorienting beauty.

"We're relying on you."

"Can you find us a path?"

Luna stood in the center of the group, a small, fragile figure in a world of blinding, crystalline light.

Her eyes were closed, her face a mask of pure, agonizing concentration.

She wasn't trying to see.

She was listening.

"The maze… it's singing," she whispered, her voice a distant, wondering thing.

Michael focused, trying to hear what she heard.

He couldn't hear a sound.

But he could feel it. A low, almost imperceptible vibration in the crystal beneath his feet. A pulse. A rhythm.

"The crystal… it has a rhythm," Luna murmured, confirming his own feeling. "A heartbeat."

"It's not a dead thing," she said, her eyes snapping open, wide with a new, dawning, and terrified understanding.

"It's alive."

She pointed a trembling finger to a shimmering, archway-like formation to their left, a path that looked no different from any other.

"That way," she said, her voice gaining a new, quiet confidence. "The song is… quieter there. Less angry."

"Quieter is good," Jax chirped. "My ears are still ringing from my last great idea."

They moved, a small, cautious knot of black tactical gear in a world of overwhelming light.

They hadn't gone twenty feet when the music stopped.

The low, humming pulse of the labyrinth flatlined.

The silence that followed was absolute.

And it was hungry.

From the walls themselves, the crystal seemed to flow, to coalesce, its shimmering facets rearranging themselves with a silent, terrifying speed.

A pack of sleek, beautiful, and utterly deadly creatures formed out of the light.

They were wolves.

Or a nightmare's perfect, geometric version of them.

Their bodies were carved from the same translucent, glowing crystal, their forms all sharp angles and deadly points.

Their eyes burned with a cold, internal, and deeply malevolent fire.

[CRYSTAL SENTINEL (LV. 17) IDENTIFIED.]

They didn't roar. They didn't howl.

They moved in a perfect, silent, and terrifying unison, their crystalline claws making a soft, chiming sound on the floor, a funeral dirge played on a glass piano.

"Contact!" Jinx yelled, her rifle already barking.

PING!

The bullet, a high-caliber, armor-piercing round that could punch through DGC armor, struck the lead Sentinel in the chest.

It didn't leave a hole.

It didn't even leave a scratch.

It just glanced off with a high-pitched, whining scream, ricocheting around the cavern like a trapped, angry hornet.

"They're bulletproof!" Jax yelled, his voice a mixture of sheer, unadulterated terror and a new, profound, and deeply unsettling delight.

"Of course, they're bulletproof!" he cackled. "This is so much more interesting!"

The pack was on them.

The fight was a chaotic, disorienting dance of light and death.

Michael moved, a blur of motion, his Reaper's Fang a useless sliver of black against their shimmering, crystalline hides.

CLANG!

His blade met a Sentinel's flank, and the impact sent a jarring, painful shock up his arm.

It was like punching a diamond.

He couldn't get a purchase. He couldn't find a weak point.

He summoned his Revenant.

The air grew cold. The familiar, purple tear in reality opened with a sound like tearing silk.

The glitching, spectral form of the Phase Hound emerged, a welcome patch of purple darkness in the blinding, white light.

The Sentinels ignored it.

They flowed around it as if it wasn't even there.

Their attention was fixed, with a cold, single-minded focus, on the one thing in the room that was a true threat to them.

The one thing that was not of this crystalline world.

Luna.

"They're after the Seer!" Chloe's voice was a sharp, urgent command. "Protect her! At all costs!"

Jinx was already moving, her own rifle useless. She put herself between Luna and the lead Sentinel, her body a small, defiant wall of black tactical gear and pure, stubborn spite.

The Sentinel lunged, its crystalline jaws snapping shut.

Jinx parried the attack with the butt of her rifle, the impact sending a jarring shock through her arms.

The rifle stock cracked.

She was losing.

"Jax!" she roared, her voice tight with strain. "Any time you're ready to make with the boom-boom would be great!"

"Patience, Jinxie, patience!" Jax called back, his voice full of a manic, creative glee. "Art cannot be rushed!"

He had one of his new "Crystal Calamity" grenades in his hand.

He wasn't aiming at the hounds.

He was aiming at the ceiling.

"If you can't break the toy," he said, a wild grin on his face, "break the shelf it's sitting on!"

He threw the grenade.

It sailed through the air and attached itself with a soft click to a massive, chandelier-like formation of crystals hanging directly over the pack.

He slammed his hand down on a detonator.

There was no explosion.

There was just a sound.

A single, pure, and impossibly high-pitched note that vibrated in their very bones.

The massive crystal formation shuddered.

It seemed to hold its form for a single, silent, beautiful second.

Then, it dissolved.

It turned from a solid, shimmering thing into a cascade of fine, glittering dust.

A shower of razor-sharp, crystalline sand rained down on the Crystal Sentinels.

They let out a silent, pained shriek as their beautiful, perfect forms were scoured, pitted, and weakened by the resonant pulse.

Their crystalline hides, once flawless, were now a mass of tiny, hairline fractures.

They weren't bulletproof anymore.

"Light 'em up!" Jax screamed, his voice full of a pure, triumphant joy.

Michael didn't hesitate.

He was a phantom in the swirling, glittering dust, his blade no longer useless.

He moved, a whirlwind of black and purple.

His Reaper's Fang, now infused with a heavy [Void Slash], met the weakened crystal of the first Sentinel.

It didn't clang.

It shattered.

With a sound like a thousand tiny wind chimes breaking at once, the Sentinel exploded into a shower of beautiful, deadly, and deeply satisfying crystal shards.

They had done it.

They had won the first round.

They stood panting in the sudden, ringing silence, their bodies covered in a fine, glittering dust that sparkled in the refracted light.

"Okay," Jax said, his voice a little shaky, but his grin wider than ever. "That was awesome."

Luna, her eyes wide, just stared at them.

At Jinx, who was already reloading her rifle.

At Jax, who was already sketching new, terrible ideas on his datapad.

At Michael, who stood panting, his form wreathed in a faint, dark, and terrifyingly powerful aura.

These weren't just heroes.

They were a storm.

And she was standing in the eye of it. M

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